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Here is a mix of plate samples, tests and one offs. The lavender, green, crystally glaze, which looks like such a success, seems to really be a failure. It came out of the kiln last July and I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had seen. I pictured tables set with plates like this. I’ve tried it on a dozen or more plates since then and it has never been anything but a washed out creamy white. Very depressing. I’ve kept the original in the pottery so I can remember what that glaze combination can be at its best. I haven’t given up on it yet.

The other five pictures are variations of the glaze combination on the platter in the last post. The next step is to try different colorants in the cover glaze, or maybe layer other colors under the cover glaze. I’ve got a set of wide rimmed plates thrown that I’ll glaze like the sample above with the open center. I’m picturing sets of plates like that in the shop next summer, but I guess I’d better keep my enthusiasm in check until I find how dependable it really is.  

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Not having fired the wood kiln this fall means that I’ll be firing the gas kiln over the winter just so I can build up my stock of pots to fill the shop next summer. Here are a few pieces I am getting excited about that are from recent gas firings. The cereal bowl in the bottom right picture has a glaze full of different colors, with a crystally surface. The glaze seems to be repeatable in small bowls, but I can’t get it to work on other shapes. In any case, I’m pleased with it. And the glaze pattern on the platter is one that I think I’ll use on more things this year. I’ve got wide rimmed dinner plates thrown that I hope to glaze in a similar way. I’ll certainly have platters like this. I don’t know how how the glaze will do on vertical surfaces like vases and lamps, but I’ll be finding out. 

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Around November 1st the weather turned wet and cold and I got back to the pottery full time. The first order that needed filling was another run of escargot pots for Bistrot la Minette in Philadelphia. As you may imagine, these are not exciting to throw, especially after the first few hundred, but it is a lot of fun to see how classy they look in use in a high end restaurant. It is also kind of nice to start a cycle in the shop with a few days of straightforward work. No major thinking to do, just get used to the repetition. By the time I am done I am mentally ready get going on my own pots

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I haven’t been updating this blog as regularly as I’d hoped. Here it is Dec 2017, and here is my excuse:  

As visitors may have noticed, the shops have been looking a little ragged for the last few years. Shop roofs leaked, buildings hadn’t been painted in years, the weaving deck was collapsing. This fall I stopped work in the pottery for 2 months and worked instead on fixing the place up. Both shops have new metal roofs in a garrish but cheerful scarlet red, the old deck has been torn off and replaced, and all the shop buildings are painted, as well as half our house and half of Mom’s. It is amazing how fast you can paint things with a sprayer if you lower your standards just a bit. The upper picture is how it looked in progress. The lower one is how it all looked the morning after the tail end of a hurricane blew through at the end of October. 

Since I made no pots all fall I wasn’t able to fire the wood kiln. It was the first fall firing I have missed since 2005. The upside of it all was that I got to enjoy the fall instead of feeling like the season was one long push to get the wood kiln full and fired before the snow came. On the downside I really miss not having a kiln full of new wood fired pots in the shop. I’ll fire the gas kiln all winter and fire the wood kiln again in the spring. 

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When I was just getting my shop set up in the 1970′s an established potter nearby told me to make plates. They were the ticket to a solid base of returning customers. So I did. Thirty years later, as he wound his business down, he told me to stay away from dinnerware. It was a trap that would lock me into a certain style for my whole career. 

My approach to dinnerware has been to try to make the plates somewhat similar over the years but not worry at all about matching bowls or mugs or anything else. People could mix things up in any way they wanted, I could follow new ideas as they came along, and all of our lives would be more interesting. 

Since I started selling pots my standard dinnerware has been dark grey with a rusty rim and a heron silhouette. It was hard enough keeping them in stock. I didn’t want to complicate my life by offering other choices. But now I’m thinking I might want to stock some different patterns. 

My hope is to have dinner and salad plates in these glaze combinations stocked in the shop this summer, as well as the normal supply of heron plates. These new glazes are all variable, and it will take me at least one season to figure out which ones are too variable to put up with. 

I have always liked a table set with a variety of plates. It gives me something enjoyable to have an opinion about when I sit down. The best approach is to have plates from a lot of different potters but maybe having several choices from one potter would be almost as good.

These glazes are all fired in the gas kiln so I can make new stock during the summer when it is too hot to fire the wood kiln, and during the winter when it is too cold. It seems like a great plan to me at the moment. We’ll see. 

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Here are a few pots from years past, with no real rhyme or reason as to which were chosen. I did them in the first 5 or so years of firing the wood kiln. They were as large as I ever threw - maybe topping out around 32″ high. It was a lot of fun doing them but I eventually realized that I needed real instruction from someone with experience if I was going to continue. It was also obvious that making them really disrupted my work flow just when I was hoping that my work in the shop would get easier. So, I no longer make them in any numbers, and no longer in the wood kiln at all.

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Now that I am thinking about firing my new gas kiln I am going back to see what kind of glaze combinations might work well. These are from a few years ago. I had forgotten about the green matt with the copper trailing. I had also forgotten about that long platter shape (20″ long I think), though it used to be a favorite of mine. 

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Wood Kiln Plans

Here are some pictures of Dad and I building the wood kiln in the fall of 2004. Looking at it now is kind of daunting. I don’t know that I would have the energy to start on such a big project anymore, but back then the two of us went from a bare slab to a finished kiln in 4 weeks.

The floor plan was based on the Ruggles and Rankin kilns that were described in Studio Potter, vol 22, numbers 1 & 2. I don’t like catenary arches so I straightened the walls and drew in sprung arches. I went with a Bourry Box firebox, and figured the firebox and flue ratios using Gary Hatcher’s article in Studio Potter vol 19, number 2. The kiln fires easily using split 4′ spruce. For years we fired in one 16-20 hour session but the overnights got to be too much for me. Now we fire over 2 days, a long first day and a shorter second day, and I sleep soundly at home.

Dad was a very good draftsman and drew up a nice set of plans for us to use.  There are 7 pages in all, two of which are for the ironwork. They are not finished plans, and there are no material lists. They are just working plans for use by someone who understands brick work, understands kiln basics, and has access to something like the Ruggles  and Rankin and Gary Hatcher articles. I have sets of plans available for $12, including shipping. 

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The wood kiln in the spring of 2005

   My wood fired kiln, looking very clean and new all those years ago. The next firing, in June 2017, will be number 35. I still use this kiln to fire the majority of my pots. It still looks pretty much the same, in a well used kind of way. 

I have also been firing some pots in a smaller salt kiln. This fall it needed urgent repairs and I decided to take it down and replace it with a large new reduction kiln. I’m going to miss the pots that came out of the salt kiln, but not the mess and the upkeep. The new kiln will be simpler to prepare for and simpler to fire. The picture above is during construction.